The 11th edition of the Europan competition explores a European urban realm undergoing dramatic changes. The global financial crisis has led to tires burning in Greece and protesters marching the streets of Paris. A wave of young, unemployed but highly educated Europeans has been called “The Lost Generation”. Europe is a territory of emerging conflicts. Strained public budgets will force architects to develop strategies for public space that serve a greater set of purposes – political, economical, social, and environmental. Future emphasis is not on how architecture looks, but what it does. Even in Norway, an economic island in many ways, a new post oil era is closing in. Paired with rising pension costs, a new reality of fiscal constraint is emerging even here. Europan Norway believes we will need to develop an architecture that does more with less. Europan 11 will be an arena where we can explore this on a broad international level.
Europan Norway presents three sites this edition. The Oslo site addresses the issue of by-product space of consumerism, as contenders are asked to design a dump yard transformation in Oslo east.
The Skien/Porsgrunn sites deal with a common space beyond communal borders and the need for developing sustainable infrastructure in urban sprawl, a reality for much of Norway’s widespread urban landscape.
Haugesund invites contenders to develop a concept that shows how the margins of existing urban centres can contribute to an expanded city centre model. Suffering from reduced activity in the historical down town, the city needs a design for a symbiotic coexistence between history and future, centre and outskirt. For more information, click here.
